Blame It On Paris

by Jennifer Greene

He told himself it was so good because he knew her body now. Knew that a certain stroke ignited her sensual core. Knew that the undersides of her breasts were exquisitely tender. Knew that she liked to ride as much as she loved to be ridden. Knew that she was wary of being hurt, because she had this way of tensing right before he entered her, as if any lover or lovers she'd had in the past hadn't taken care to insure she was ready.

  Knew that sometimes she liked speed and a fast pump.

  That sometimes she liked slow and long and whispered words.

  He knew so much about her now. But he had a bad feeling, after they finally crashed from the last rocketing orgasm, that none of those factors explained why it was so impossibly good between them.

  It was starlight.

  And spring moonbeams.

  And Paris.

  He closed his eyes, thinking he was so wiped he was going to sleep forever. Yet he didn't sleep for ages, just held her, inhaled her, long after she'd zonked out completely.

  It was the magic of her that made it so different. So right.

  He knew it. And so did his heart.

  KELLY WOKE UP to the sound of a ringing phone. Eyes still closed, she patted the bed next to her, thinking she'd better make sure Will knew he had a call. But the smooth sheet was already cool, and when she opened one sleepy eye, she found boundless bright daylight. Below, the lusty roar of traffic was near deafening, even if she hadn't realized it a second before. The day had galloped into full gear while they were still snoozing.

  At least while she was still snoozing.

  She pushed away the covers, aware that every private part of her body was tender. Embarrassingly so. So embarrassing that she seemed to have a smile on her mouth that wouldn't quit. Even before coffee.

  "Will?" she called, and then chuckled when she saw him standing in the doorway.

  Her hero, her lover, her darling, was holding a fresh mug of coffee. He was also wearing only jeans, and the bare feet and bare chest aroused fresh desire in her when. Lord knows, she should be satiated times ten.

  "Hey, y…" A teasing greeting was on the tip of her lips, but it died. And so did her smile.

  He was just standing there, but something in his expression alerted her to a problem.

  "What's wrong?" she asked immediately.

  "Nothing. Nothing at all." He brought the mug over, handed it to her and said in a hearty voice. "The call was from the consulate. Your passport's ready. I gave them heaps of praise. They did everything but stand on their heads to get the paperwork moving this fast. They even booked you a first-class ticket home, for the same price as the flight you had to cancel. Tomorrow morning, at the crack of dawn. As close to your original departure date as they could get."

  "Oh." Her cheerful smile suddenly felt as frozen as his. "That's wonderful." She felt as if her chest had caved in from the blow of a five-ton lead ball. Or a heart attack. Or maybe it was just that her heart suddenly felt broken. "I thought everybody complained about the bureaucracy in France. And here they came through like troupers. Arranging the ticket home was unbelievably nice."

  "I think they felt bad about the mugging. And they didn't want an American going home, whining about the French."

  "I wouldn't have done that."

  "I know, but they didn't. Anyway, it's really great," he said.

  "Really great," she echoed, and then couldn't seem to speak at all.

  She didn't have any more vacation time. Piles of new crises were up in the air-like the knowledge that she had a father and brothers. She also had a life impatiently waiting for her back home. A job, the need to make money. Her mom.

  And oh. yeah. Jason. Her fiancé.

  She had to go home.

  It didn't matter how she felt about Will. All she'd shared with him. all she felt for him.

  Didn't matter how deeply and insanely and crazily she'd fallen in love with him.

  She had to fix her real life. Her American life.

  "Well," she said, and then couldn't seem to remember how to breathe.

  "Quit looking like that." Will said suddenly, swiftly. "We've got one more day. And there are some places you have to see, things you have to do."

  "What?"

  "You'll see," he said.

  She'd barely showered and dressed before he hustled her out the door. He bought beignets from a vendor for breakfast, then took her down to an old part of Paris. The sign over the door read Chemist, but she discovered it was really a parfumerie, where the chemist created an individual perfume for each customer.

  'This is going to be too expensive." She didn't actually know the cost, because no one had mentioned anything specific. But she'd seen two clients amble in, one wearing an Hermes scarf and the other a Chanel bag. which was clear enough proof the scents weren't cheap.

  But nothing could talk Will out of this. Heaven knows, he looked like an antsy tiger in the cage, but he kept talking to the chemist, a wizened little man with a beak nose. Apparently the process began with the chemist asking questions about the woman's natural likes and dislikes.

  "I can understand him well enough to answer those questions," Kelly said.

  "No. You don't know about you. Not like I know about you," Will said, and turned back to his conversation. The chemist did some patches on her skin, testing for pH, but the questions were all about her. What scents were more natural to her-flowers, musk; did she tend to be sexy, sweet, exotic. Oriental, what was her nature?

  Will told the chemist that she was elegant. Fresh. No musk, maybe something with flowers, but not heavy flowers-in-your-face. Sexy, but not the kind of scent someone would pick up unless close to her. More a scent just for a lover. Not gaudy, not look-at-me. But something in the scent needed to have a hint of a surprise, something you'd never expect.

  "That's how you see me?" Kelly asked.

  By then Will had rejected the first scent, insisted the chemist try harder. And then they had it. The exquisite little vial was sapphire-blue, her favorite color, and when the chemist put a drop of the scent on her wrist, she looked up in both surprise and delight. She loved perfumes, but she'd never smelled anything like this.

  An hour later. Will teased her, "People are going to think you're weird if you keep smelling your wrist."

  "It's just so wonderful!"

  "That's the thing. It's your scent alone. That's the whole point…" He'd managed to put together a mini picnic with bread, cheese, wine, a blanket. There were so many fantastic gardens in Paris, but Will had claimed this was a favorite of his-a spot he'd discovered the first month he moved here. It was a place in the lee of some giant old trees, where yellow and blue flowers peeked through the soft grasses, catching the warm sun beams.

  They lay head to head, after eating. "Just a twenty-minute nap, no longer," he warned her. "We still have miles to go today."

  Midafternoon. they caught a mime show in a park. Then Will insisted they needed to take one last run through Notre Dame, and since she knew how allergic Will was to churches, she was touched he was willing to do that for her. After that came a winding walk on the rue Monge, with all its Latin Quarter flavor.

  From the old Halles market, he bought her a scarf-blue and white, silky and long-and then a silly, touristy Eiffel Tower key ring, and then, it was on to dinner. The restaurant had neither a sign nor a name. The place was perched high, where the windows overlooked the night lights of Paris. Inside was candlelight, a rich merlot and the chef who informed them what they were going to eat-and that they were going to love it beyond anything they'd ever tasted before.

  Dinner was delicacy after delicacy. Then they drove back to Will's place and walked around. He got suckered into buying a bouquet of flowers from a vendor who was closing down, so she carried those in one hand, sniffing them every few moments, clasping Will's hand with her free one. Dusk faded into night, night into long past midnight. Yet still they walked, block after block, until their feet were tired.

  She knew they had to go back, knew she had to pack, but sh
e knew they'd make love one last time in his apartment, and she didn't want there to be a one last time.

  Around three in the morning, a mist settled, making the streets glow and the night lights shine like diamonds. They looked at each other, and finally turned around and started the return to his place. Neither said anything…until Will was turning the key in the lock, and she had the hopeless, helpless thought that this was the last time she'd ever see him do that.

  So she charged in, as if she had energy, determined to turn this mood around. He offered to pour her a glass of wine while she headed straight in to pack her belongings, which were scattered all over his apartment.

  "We've only got two hours before we have to leave for the airport," he warned her.

  "Eek." There, she'd made him smile. She put him to work folding, a job he was amazingly awful at, while she flew around gathering her things.

  At least, that was her intent. And it worked, her busyness, until she dove in her bag for her tickets… and came across the blue vial of perfume. The scent of it, the sentiment of it, the uniqueness of it, reminded her of everything she'd found in Paris.

  Especially Will.

  When she looked up, he was motionless in the doorway.

  "Look," she said, "I have to go."

  "I know you do."

  "My entire life is in chaos at home. I have to get it straightened out. It can't be done from here."

  "Like dumping the fiancé," Will said. He'd been folding a sweater. It looked somewhat like an accordion with arms.

  She tried a watery laugh, took over the folding job. She didn't comment about dumping Jason, any more than she ever did when he brought up her fiancé. Jason was her problem, her business. She tried for a more cheerful note.

  "And you. Mr. White Knight, are going to be glad to get your place back to yourself, aren't you? No more girly shampoos in your shower, no more earrings on the table, no more hogging your covers. When you saved me from the mugger crisis, it's not as if you planned on taking in a boarder indefinitely, huh?"

  She thought he might laugh. Instead he hooked her hand, the one that held a handful of thongs and bras. She dropped them at the look in his eyes. "Not a boarder." he said huskily. "A lover."

  "Yeah…a lover," she whispered back. And then out it came, the aching pain in her heart. "How am I supposed to leave you. Will?"

  The suitcase got shooshed to the floor. With the overhead light on. her clothing draped on the spread and chairs and everywhere else, he reached for her as fast, as hopelessly, as fiercely as she reached for him.

  It wasn't like the other times. She wanted to beguile him with kisses, enchant him with touch, cajole his heart. She wanted to be inseparably part of him. She wanted this to be the best sex he'd ever had. She wanted him never to forget her. She wanted to be loved, by him, only by him. forever and ever.

  The first part of that was easy enough.

  It was the last part she couldn't have. When it was over, when they were both lying there, damp and out of breath, she wrapped her arms around him and refused to let go.

  Except, of course, the clock was ticking.

  Will seemed to realize the time at the same moment. "Hell," he grumbled. "We might just make your flight if we start moving at a dead run."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THERE WAS NO GETTING around fast anywhere in Orly. It was one of those discombobulated, crazy airports where you walked miles to get nowhere, stood in lines that never ended, had your nerves and temper frayed before you even started.

  On the other hand. Will thought, he'd gotten her here. His plan for the whole last day had been just this. To keep both of them running a hundred miles an hour so she wouldn't have a chance to cry, to get upset and emotional, before they had to split up.

  Both of them looked like wrecks. No sleep at all. But she looked like a cute wreck, with her flyaway hair and whisker-burned cheeks and lopsided sweater. He was standing with her through the initial check-in procedure, which was going-naturally-slower than molasses.

  And that was when-instead of doing the emotional thing he'd been trying to avoid-she did the nosy, prying thing.

  He almost wished she'd have cried instead.

  There were still six passengers ahead when she started. "Will… you know, if I'm stuck straightening out this impossible relationship or nonrelationship with my father. I think you should feel stuck working out something with your father, too."

  When he'd fallen insanely in love with her. he'd forgotten that part-the part where she opened emotional doors without knocking and talked in completely feminine sentences. "One plus one does not equal Q, Kelly. Your issues with your father are a universe different than the issues I've got with mine."

  She moved up a spot, but her gaze was on him. not on the line. "Actually, they're really similar. They're both impossible situations. They're both our fathers. And our unresolved issues with them have defined who we are. And…"

  "And what?" He was getting miffed.

  "And if you decide to mend fences with your dad, then you'd have to come home to South Bend."

  But he couldn't go home.

  Suddenly it was her turn in the line, and then she had to go through security, past the gates where he couldn't go.

  He kissed her, long and hard and hopelessly. She walked backward, as if she wanted every last second of looking at his face that she could have. And when she was hustled through the last gates, out of sight, he searched for a waiting area with windows where he could watch her plane take off.

  The spring morning was still misty and damp. Rude travelers jostled for spots at the window and he just jostled back, watching until the plane turned into a bird, then disappeared in the sky altogether.

  He couldn't go home, he repeated to himself. But the sudden hole in his gut felt like nothing in the known universe could fill it.

  There was nothing really new about that hole. He already knew he'd fallen in love with her. In love, like he'd never been in love. Love, like he'd never known love. A woman…like no other woman.

  Bleary-eyed, zombie tired, he battled his way through the crowd toward the exit.

  People think they fall in love in Paris every spring, he told himself firmly. It was a fantasy. It didn't mean it was real.

  It was just…Paris.

  And spring.

  And her unforgettable brown eyes.

  He put his hands in his pockets and stalked outside, trying to remember where he'd parked the car. The late-night mist had turned into a steady morning drizzle that soaked his head and blurred his vision. His thoughts were just as dark.

  He couldn't go back to South Bend. Kelly didn't know, couldn't know, how bad it was for him there. It wasn't an option.

  And there was nothing he could do about it.

  WHEN KELLY CLIMBED off the plane in South Bend, the clock claimed it was two in the afternoon, but Paris time would be nine at night…and since she hadn't slept on either of the flights home, her body didn't know what time of day or night it was.

  While she waited for her luggage, her stomach kept lurching and her head refused to stop pounding-possibly because her body was so mixed up, but more probably because being home felt like landing on an alien planet.

  She was supposed to be Kelly Nicole Rochard. Or she assumed she'd feel like herself when she got home again. The impossible, crazy, wonderful love affair with Will should have felt like a distant dream, a fantasy.

  This was supposed to be her real life. Right?

  A young woman with spiked red hair hurled through the doors near baggage claim and shrieked when she saw her. "Kelly! I'm so glad you asked me to come! You look wonderful!"

  Kelly figured she actually looked what she was, tired and crumbling from the inside out. But Brenna, the girl Friday in the office, was an ideal chauffeur for this venture.

  Originally Kelly had thought to have her mother to pick her up, but she'd changed that plan. She needed to talk to her mom, soon and seriously, but not yet. Her first crisis had to b
e a confrontational talk with Jason, come hell or high water, sick or not sick, tired or not tired. And Brenna was perfect company, first because she was thrilled to have the excuse to get out of the office, and second, because she was impossibly easy to be with.

  Skinny as a rail, tottering on four-inch heels, Brenna yanked all Kelly's luggage away from her. wrapped her hands around a fresh chai and chattered the whole drive. How was Paris? Were the men hot? Did Kelly hate not being able to eat American food? How scary it must have been, to get mugged and lose her passport. She'd been missed; her desk was heaped to the ceiling, and no one could calm down Myrna in a snit the way she could. Myrna could be getting a divorce. Everyone knew her husband was fooling around. Sam had got a new dog. He'd brought it in to the office one day and it had peed all over the place.

  "Do you want me to come in and help you unpack?" she asked at the apartment, looking hopeful.

  "Thanks. Brenna, but I can take it from here. I can't thank you enough for picking me up. I owe you a dinner. And I'll see you at the office tomorrow."

  Brenna looked crestfallen at not being able to cop more time out of the office, but her expression brightened almost immediately. "You're probably hot for the reunion with Jason, huh? You two lovebirds haven't seen each other in two weeks now! I'll bet you can hardly stand it!"

  "Hmm," Kelly said.

  And then there she was. Alone, standing in front of the apartment. The place was just a few miles from the Notre Dame campus, and a mile from the infamous shopping on Grape Road. It was one of those typical complexes for young professionals. Most of the occupants were single, a few married, but nobody had kids yet. The place could get pretty rowdy on a Friday night, but midafternoon, like now, there was barely a car in sight except for her white Saturn, sitting, dusty, in the spot next to Jason's.

  She lugged her gear up the walk, turned the key and pushed open the door. Her heart sank lower than sludge when she let herself inside.

  The only sound in the place was a ticking clock, a clock she'd bought herself two months ago, on sale. It had been Jason's apartment before hers. She'd moved in because there came a point where it seemed ridiculous not to. He'd given her the ring. They'd been sleeping together. Their families and friends had been expecting the marriage announcement for years-probably close to a decade. It just didn't make sense to pay two separate rents when they were consolidating what they had together.